Saturday, September 22, 2012

Party it up with Legos

As I've mentioned on my blog, September is a birthday-heavy month with my son's and husband's birthdays two days apart in the middle of the month. Last week, we hosted family and friends to celebrate seven years for my baby boy. It sure doesn't seem like it's been seven years.....Our boy is pretty obsessed with Legos. I used to be obsessed as well.....my brother and I had a cardboard box of Lego pieces and we would spend hours building things. So, the apple does not fall far from the tree!I was trying to think of a theme and I thought about Legos.....I Googled it and tons of ideas popped up. Off we went.I made the invitations. If you're not making a ton of them, it doesn't take too much time. I cut the little Lego shapes out of colored paper and glued them on....then wrote the essential info.

I raided the local Lego store for some supplies. They had minifigures for a few bucks apiece, so I bought a few for game prizes. The guy at the checkout also let me have a bunch of Lego magazines and posters....I told him I was having a Lego party. We were trying to keep a low budget! I used the magazines for goody bags. I also used a poster on the front door for decor.In the goody bags--magazine, Lego coloring pages (Google this), Lego candy bricks bought at a local candy store and a few other candy treats.For table decor, I filled a vase with Lego pieces and stuck a few pinwheels in them. If you can't find pinwheels you like, they are pretty easy to make. (Google is your friend)

Activities......we did two games plus a building challenge. The first game was to guess the number of Lego pieces in a jar. Pretty self-explanatory! Our next game was Pin The Head on the Minifigure. This took a little more prep time. I used my interactive white board at school to trace a minifigure. It would have been way tougher for me to freehand it. So, I did a top, bottom, two hands and a head. I then traced the heads and cut them out. I did stack the head paper so I could do a 3-4 at a time....I also drew a face on each one. I preaffixed tape to them and kept them on a tray. I put my husband in charge of running the game....the kids think he's pretty funny.

For the building challenge, we sat the kids down to make something and they had to come up with a title for it. I put MegaBloks and Duplos in the next room for the 3-and-under set. I had cut some Lego shapes out of construction paper and wrote everyone's name on one. My husband and I circulated as they were building and we came up with funny awards for each kid.....for example "One Sweet Ride" for a car and "Tallest Antennae" for a really tall creation. Most of the kids were occupied for a good 10-15 minutes and enjoyed the awards. We awarded the certificates while they were eating cake.

Speaking of cake, I also tried my hand at making a cake. I had some tips from a friend that helped a bunch. Basically, I made a 9x13" cake that I cut in half and put icing in between the layers. I also made cupcakes and used four of them to make the dots on the brick. I froze all of the pieces and that way, I was able to trim off the sides of the pieces to make them look more Lego-like.

I also iced it frozen to eliminate a lot of the crumbs coming off the cake. I made buttercream icing and used gel food coloring to make it a red color. I presented it with some Lego vehicles and minifigures. It was a hit! You can email me if you have questions about how to do all of that.

A bit of work, but not too bad if you spread it out a little over several days or nights. All in all, it was a hit!

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About Me

I'm a wife, mom and teacher with a slight DIY addiction. My vices? Gardening, home improvement, tools, crafts and dash of sewing. Assorted life adventures also fair game. My husband and I have two beautiful kids and I shape young minds in my day job as a music teacher.